Dec. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Roger Agnelli, who oversaw a 10-fold
surge in shares as head of Vale SA, is setting up his own
commodities empire on a bet metal and food prices will resume a
rally.

Agnelli, 53, this year founded a firm to invest in
commodities ventures from a biodiesel plant to make fuel for
jets in Brazil to a deep-water port project in Africa. In July,
he teamed up with billionaire Andre Esteves’s Banco BTG Pactual
SA to create B&A Mineracao SA, which has bought a controlling
stake in Cuprum Resources Corp., a closely held company with
copper assets in Chile, Agnelli said. He declined to disclose
financial terms of the deal.

“We’re not a fund -- we’re operators,” Agnelli said at
the Sao Paulo office of his holding company, AGN Agroindustrial,
Projetos & Participacoes Ltda. “We’ll invest in companies that
we will operate. We believe in our implementation and production
capacity.”

The Standard & Poor’s GSCI Spot Index of 24 raw materials,
which increased almost fourfold since 2001, had retreated 1.9
percent this year through yesterday as growth slowed in China,
the world’s biggest consumer of copper, iron ore and soybeans.

Agnelli left as chief executive officer of Vale last year
after the government publicly criticized him for not investing
enough in Brazil. Under Agnelli, Rio de Janeiro-based Vale
became the world’s second-largest miner by market value.

Iron Slump

The stock has plunged 22 percent since April 4, 2011, the
day Vale said it would replace Agnelli, as iron-ore prices
declined. That compares with a 15 percent drop for Brazil’s
benchmark Bovespa index. Vale, the world’s largest iron-ore
producer, trades at 6.4 times estimated 2013 earnings, compared
with an average 10.9 for companies on the Bovespa.

Vale advanced 1.4 percent to 37.43 reais at the close in
Sao Paulo today, the highest since Sept. 20.

Agnelli “is very aggressive in terms of his management
style; he made a couple of aggressive moves extending Vale’s
business,” Ed Kuczma, who helps manage about $36.4 billion at
Van Eck Associates Corp., said in a telephone interview Dec. 7.
“While he was there, the company did a great job of increasing
the share price and also giving back money to investors in terms
of dividends,” he said about Vale.

AGN is a holding company structured around four business
units: B&A, biofuels, logistics and commodities trading. Agnelli
tapped executives from Vale, as well as Brazilian steelmaker
Cia. Siderurgica Nacional SA and Monsanto Co. to run the units.

‘New Moment’

His increased interest in metals and crops, with a focus on
ventures in Brazil and Africa, comes as Vale scales back its
operations. The commodities industry may be nearing the end of a
super-cycle, requiring companies to be stricter with capital
expenditures, Murilo Ferreira, who succeeded Agnelli at Vale,
said during a presentation to investors in New York on Dec. 3.

“We are living a new moment in the mining industry,”
Ferreira said. “The new scenario requires stricter discipline
in capital allocation.”

Agnelli remains unfazed. Demand for commodities will
rebound as the world’s population expands and rising incomes
swell the ranks of the middle class in emerging markets,
boosting consumption, he said.

“We will need more raw materials to guarantee the
production of all that, from fertilizers to minerals,” he said
in the interview as he pointed to Brazil and Africa on a map of
the world that covered one wall of his office.

Risk Taking

Agnelli, who previously headed the investment arm of Banco
Bradesco SA, Latin America’s second-largest bank by market
value, joins a list of Brazilian entrepreneurs taking risks to
set up their own ventures, said Joao Augusto de Castro Neves, an
analyst at Eurasia Group.

“His growth numbers at Vale are impressive,” Neves said
in a telephone interview from Washington, D.C. “He’s taking his
experience at Vale and applying it initially in a smaller and
diversified scale.”

AGN, which has about 40 employees, won’t consider selling
shares until after its projects start producing, Agnelli said.

“I will go to the public and get money only after I can
show the clear potential of the projects I have,” he said. “We
will need partners, initially strategic partners but further in
the future we may even look at capital markets, open the capital
of these companies.”

Agnelli’s minority partners in AGN include Fabio Spina, a
former Vale general counsel; Carolina Menezes, a former
investment banker with Goldman Sachs Group Inc; Banco Indusval
SA’s co-CEO Jair Ribeiro; and Alfredo De Goeye, chairman of
trading firm Sertrading SA.

“Things are going a bit slow considering my temperament,
but I think quite quickly,” he said, making fun of his alleged
eagerness for performance. “For one that didn’t want to have an
executive life, I am even having quite a bit of fun.”